C is for All Things Climbing, Apparently

Crazed crack climber at the U of C (forgive the deer in the headlights expression – that’s what happens when the photographer suddenly appears above you when you’re least expecting anyone to be up there! – thanks, Paul…)

How to chose what to write about today? Cliffs? Climbing as a philosophical metaphor for life? Crimps? Cracks? Carabiners? Chimneys? Chalk? Chicken heads? (yes, that’s a thing – I’m not getting confused with my past life as a farmer…) Chicken wing? (also a thing – actually, a technique and quite different to a chicken head, which is a type of rock formation). Campus boards? Clipping in? Crash pad? Crampon? Crags? Careful footwork? Crusty scabs? Couloirs? Camping? What about cranking? Cordelettes? Corners? Clipsticks? Or, the most common word people who don’t climb use to describe climbers – Crazy! Just listing the possibilities could add up to the day’s blog post!

And then there are the people – Conrad Anker – or Chris Sharma – or Chris Bonnington – Alycia Cavadi – or the names of specific climbs – Cookie Cliff in Yosemite or Cat Wall in Indian Creek… Or more general climbing destinations – Croatia, Colorado, California…

Where to begin??

How about calories? As in, how many calories does a climber burn? According to nutristrategy.com, a 130 lb person will burn about 650 calories in an hour of climbing rock. More, I guess, if you are carrying a heavy pack. The more you weigh, the more calories you burn, which makes sense as it’s a huge effort to haul yourself upwards…

This handy dandy calculator estimates how many calories you’ll burn if you climb for an hour (based on age, gender, height, and weight)… [I would burn off about 350 calories, my climbing partner 450 calories]

Which might account for why, after we leave the crags after a full day of climbing we can be ravenously hungry even if we’ve been snacking… say, on CLIF Bars!!